You can do it in Vegas, but the EASIEST way to do this would be to get Camtasia, have it record your movements in Excel if you've already got this built and working in there. Use Camtasia at an uncompressed setting, full resolution. It's slow, but it will allow you to create an uncompressed avi that will then be imported into Vegas, where you can zoom, crop, and affect the avi with pretty sharp graphics.
Another alternative would be to borrow a projector, project the Excel file onto a screen, shoot it, and capture to Vegas.
There are of course, many ways of creating this in Vegas or other apps as well. The above are just two quick ways to accomplish this.

There is a more effecive method. Requires a little out of the box thinking and a little extra work but gives a nice effect of the timeline years moving as time goes by...

Using your favorite image program like Photoshop make two images.

Start a new file The first will be the ruler. Make it the width of your video, any height you want. Example 720 x 80. Add any markings your want to repeat. For example if you're making a ruler, Have a vertical line top to bottom at either end and have lessor lines extending up half way, and maybe a quarter way from the bottom like most rules are if you want to indicate months. Save as ruler.psd.

Make a second image. Make it the same width, a little large the the height of the text you'll used. Using the text tool add the years, months whatever you want for a range.

Example first part of your timeline starts at 1900. Type in 1900, further to right type 1910, then 1920 and the far right. Having the first image still open in Photoshop align the years in this file with the markers you created in the first file. Save as years.psd

Open Vegas

1. create 3 emply tracks.

2. Drag years psd to top track, ruler to next track, you video on 3rd.

3. Grab edge of the ruler file, drag right to it matches length of your vid on where the first range would end. Example if you video from 1900 to 190 runs 2 minutes, drag out the years layer to 2 minutes.

4. Optional:Lower opacity on the ruler track to about 60% so some ouf your video bleeds through.

5. Click on the Track Motion icon in the header area of the ruler track when you see the blue box, drag it down to postion the ruler image on screen where you want it over you main image.

6. Repeat #5 to positon the years layer over the ruler. Again using its
Track Motion to position the text.

7. Click on Pan/Crop of years layer. Set first key frame so your first year and last year end up centered. In other words no shifting on the control box shold work. To fine tune you may need to redo the image a little so neither bar on the extreme left/right of the ruler is cut off. Ir adjust using pan/crop.

8. Go to last frame of years track. Postion control box so last year (1920) in example is now shifted right in the work area. This will make it
move left as your video plays.

Test. You should see your video play with the ruler semi transparent with the years superimposed over the ruler. As the video advances, the years will slowly move left, suggesting the passage of time. How fast is set by the length of the event.

In this example the text 1900 would start at extreme left, move off screen with 1920 moving ever further left all happening in two minutes. You would need to make as many additional new year images depending on how long your timelines is, then basically just repeat linging them up and setting get frames as necessary. Using this method you timeline can be anything, speed up, slow down, pause and go on for just a few years or hundreds and the images and text will remain sharp regarless.